A few weeks back we dropped somewhat of a bombshell by declaring that Demand Response in PJM, as You Know It, Is Dead. Of course, this was meant to be a bit provocative with the goal of drawing attention to a better way of capturing the value of demand response in the rapidly evolving and controversial PJM market. During our webinar we explained why demand response in PJM is, in fact, more valuable than ever for commercial and industrial loads that leverage Voltus’s out-of-market DR program – Peak Saver – in addition to traditional in-market programs. Our webinar stirred dozens of questions, many of which we didn’t have time to cover in full detail during the webinar.

This multi-week Vlog series is dedicated to answering those questions with a bit more detail, while extending many of the concepts covered in the webinar into other markets. The goal here, as always, is to help customers turn their operational flexibility into the most cash possible wherever they have operations.

#1 – Eliminating Capacity Charges

Did you know that about 30% of your annual electricity bill comes from the electricity you use during one to five peak hours of the year? Generation and transmission demand or capacity charges (dubbed – TransCap and GenCap) are not only on the rise, but are accounting for a larger portion of large energy consumers’ electric bills over time, which means there’s a growing opportunity to reduce expense.

If you could reduce or eliminate your load during those same peak hours, you can eliminate or reduce a significant portion of your annual electric bill. Put differently, would you be willing to reduce electricity demand for 0.5% of the hours of the year to potentially reduce your annual energy bill by 30%? If the answer is, “Yes!” then we can show you how.

Voltus’s Peak Saver technology platform (VoltApp) helps to eliminate capacity charges by predicting peak load hours, instructing customers to curtail during those hours, measuring your load reduction in real-time, and verifying the savings on your electricity bill to ensure that the savings are captured. We manage this program no differently than a typical demand response program that you may have part.

Peak shaving is often operationally better aligned with a customer’s ability to curtail load or use behind-the-meter assets like onsite generation. Combining traditional in-market demand response programs with our out-of-market Peak Saver program has been proven to more than double the dollars a customer gets from demand response.

Interested in learning more? Chat with us below or email us at info@voltus.co

#2 – In-Market vs. Out-of-Market Demand Response

We’ll delve deeper into these terms and provide clarity on what programs exist in different geographic regions . . . stay tuned for the details on Thursday, 3/5!